So, you wanna be a filmmaker, eh? Find out what it's really like to live the life of a fiercely independent filmmaker from award-winning filmmaker and Filmmakers Alliance founder, Jacques Thelemaque. A regular catalogue of anecdotes, insights, nightmares, facts, fictions, tips, tricks, cautionary tales and more....

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Community. It is a word I've been hearing bandied about far too frequently these days with the proliferation of social networking sites and the ubiquity of online life. (Is Al-Queda on Facebook, yet?) But even beyond the internet world, there is something about the general uneasiness of the current global climate (literal and figurative) that is making people feel like they need to cling together to find comfort and strength.

But at what benefit and at what cost? Since Filmmakers Alliance was, is and will always be about community, I do have a vested interest in making sure that the word "community" does not lose it's importance and value - does not become diluted to meaninglessness in the same sad way as "independent film". I suppose there's nothing I, or we at FA, can do about it, if this does become the case. But we can keep the discourse alive and remind people what community really means beyond it being a purposeless buzzword that's been co-opted for commercial use.

Let's just start by making a basic cost/benefit analysis. We'll do it grocery list-style for maximum simplicity and clarity.Benefits of CommunityThe healthy organization of social interactionConnections to meaningful professional and personal contactsCommunal support for personal expressionThe aggregation of like-minded individualsAccessing of creative and life resources outside of one's own warehouse of resourcesAccessing of meaningful insight and information outside of one's own scope of experienceShared life experiences and purposeThe ability to create community subsets more specifically suited to one's needsA familial sense of belongingThe creation of projects impossible for a single individualCosts of CommunityThe dysfunctional organization of social interactionThe aggregation of like-minded individualsImposition of community will on individualityImposition of community values and aesthetics on individual expressionExposure to community judgement/criticismExposure to a lot of extraneous junkExposure to lots of fucking weirdos and/or annoying, useless people

Cleary, the benefits of community win out over the costs by a significant margin. I know this is a simple-minded summation, but it nicely suits my biased perspective. However, here's one major additional benefit that an elective community like FA (or any online community) has: it's optional.

If you don't like the community you're in, you can try to change it. If you can't change it, you can leave it. You can even start your own community and impose your will on lots of other people if your messianic impulses so compel you. In any event, it's important to know that you can explore the positives of community without being bound to the negatives of them.

And the potential benefits far outweigh the risks - if simply because you can always walk away from those risks. Filmmaking, under normal circumstances, is a communal, collaborative experience. As is film viewing. Every part of the process, from creation to presentation. benefits from community, some kind of community - probably more so than most creative endeavors and certainly more than most online "communities" which can often be nothing more than gathering places for expressing ego and dysfunction. Creating a good film demands education about the practicalities of production and the aesthetic possibilities of the medium. It also demands the putting together of many little pieces and the gathering of talents. It demands resources, connections, communicaton, information and revelation. And it demands a little bit of luck. All of that (except the luck, perhaps) exists for you in community. And much of it can even exist in an online community.

In 2009, Filmmakers Alliance will launch its Global Initiative, which is a fancy way of saying that we are globalizing the work that FA has been doing since 1993 through a soon-to-be-launched website. It won't be exactly the same, of course, as the hands-on, face-to-face work we've been doing in Los Angeles, but will be a sort of one-stop-internet-shopping for all things filmmaking - from education to exhibition to the professional management of your filmmaking lives. And on top of that, the site will indeed support the creation of hands-on, face-to-face collectives like ours throughout the world. It will be the sum of many filmmaking sites with a little Google, Facebook, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Ebay, Evite, IMDB/Withoutabox, YouTube and Hulu thrown in the mix.

We are launching globally - with purpose - not just to send winks and pokes or create a platform for out-sized egos. Our purpose is to provide all of the tools and resources we can imagine and create by which filmmakers can gain the most benefit from community and enrich their off-line, real-world, filmmaking lives. We are attacking this goal with a tripodal platform of support that includes EDUCATION, EMPOWERMENT and EXPOSURE. And woven in through all of that will be messaging and direction that educates and motivates filmmakers to do work of impactful social relevance and/or high aesthetic ambition. And it will reward those who are already doing that kind of work. But here's the best part: the site will be structured in the way that it is fluid and malleable with its course of development to be determined by the filmmakers/users themselves. Filmmakers will be able to write applications for the site (like Facebook) and contribute information (like Wikipedia), but will also be able to upload/share resources, issue creative challenges, and directly contribute to each other's work. It is our goal to exploit the full benefit of community in the most specific kind of ways using the latest web technologies. And hopefully, those technologies will build upon themselves through user contributions so that the site is a fluid, ever-evolving community that is always in step with filmmakers' needs.

I'm pretty proud of how Filmmakers Alliance has applied the concept of community. What we've done in our off-line, real-world work has been vibrant and prolific and we plan to continue nurturing that vibrancy. But now we have an amazing new way to feed that energy. For the most part, the web has defined community as a place to aggregate marketing opportunities. We are going to bring back its true meaning and make manifest its most meaningful benefits. And we very much hope you will join us in this mission. Community will not just be a lifeboat, it will be a cruise ship, taking us to the filmmaking destinations that await us.

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Wanna Know About Me? Read....

Born in Brooklyn. Moved to Colorado in 1969. Moved to Tehran, Iran in 1976. Went to Los Angeles in 1980.

After
attending both USC and UCLA in the 80's, Jacques secured a
3-picture writing deal with Imagine Entertainment.

In 1993,
Jacques co-founded Filmmakers Alliance. As
President, he built the grassroots collective into an important
independent filmmaking community and resource
organization with films screening at every major
festival in the world. He’s overseen the production
of hundreds of films (mostly shorts) and developed
a wide range of innovative and dynamic filmmaking
support programs.

In 2005,
he was named Chief Community Officer of the festival submission/filmmaker
support site, Withoutabox.com

Jacques and partner Liam Finn formed FA Productions in 2004, of which they are
Co-Presidents. Jacques has produced several feature films including "Shock
Television", ""The Dogwalker", "Within",
"Midnight Movie" and "The Revenant" and is a co-producer on
Brooklyn Reptyle’s "Audie and the Wolf". He most recently produced a
national ad spot for Coke Zero.

His
writer-director filmography includes the feature film "The Dogwalker"
(Los Angeles Film Festival, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Best First
Feature - Cinequest Film Festival), as well as the shorts "My Last Day On
Earth" (Seattle International Film Festival. Ashland Independent Film
Festival), "Transaction" (Sundance Film Festival, winner of the Grand
Prix du Jury Award in the Labo Competition at the Clermont-Ferrand
International Short Film Festival), "Infidelity In Equal Parts"
(Sundance Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival), "Egg" (Mill Valley
Film Festival, Best Comedy Short - Cinequest Film Festival, Jury Award for Best
Short – Methodfest) and "Love Without Socks" (AFI International Film
Festival). Jacques has recently completed two new feature film scripts,
"Rust", and "Hurricane Jane" as well as the short script
for "RedWhite And Blue"
as one of ten filmmakers involved in the feature-length omnibus project.He's also written over a dozen short
scripts for3rd Page a new
writing/filmmaking collective he helps manage. He begins shooting his newest
feature “Connection” in early 2014.

Jacques
also self-distributed his feature film "The The Dogwalker" in 2006 as
well as worked on the distribution team for "America So Beautiful" in
2004.

Jacques
has been a juror, guest lecturer or invited speaker for many film schools, film
festivals, film organizations, workshops, and other film-related events. He
recently taught and consulted part-time at AMDA in Hollywood. He’s formerly sat
on the advisory board for The Los Angeles Independent Film Festival (now the
Los Angeles Film Festival), the IFP Emerging Filmmaker Labs, The Ashland
Independent Film Festival, The Santa Monica Film Festival, The Silver Lake Film
Festival and the Downtown Film Festival.

Jacques
has also programmed screening events and has been a programming associate for
the Los Angeles Film Festival since 2011.

CineThoughts

The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't. - Jean-Luc GodardTo have a life as a filmmaker, you must continue to make films. Like filmmaking, being a filmmaker is a process. It demands education, experience and exposure.The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things, but above all we must dare to fail. You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all. - John Cassavetes

Good is the enemy of great. Look beyond praise to the truth of what you're creating.

Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema. - Andrei Tarkovsky

Be a true filmmaker, a true creative being. Not a merchant. Make films from and for your soul.Some rainy winter Sunday when there's a little boredom, you should carry a gun. Not to shoot yourself, but to know exactly that you're always making a choice. - Lina Wertmuller

To tell you the truth, in my work, love is always in opposition to the elements. It creates dilemmas. It brings in suffering. We can't live with it, and we can't live without it. You'll rarely find a happy ending in my work. - Krzysztof Kieslowski"I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space." - Michelangelo Antonioni

I formulated my own directing style in my own head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others…for me there was no such thing as a teacher. I have relied entirely on my own strength. - Yasujiro Ozu

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